American Modernism

1
American Modernism

• 1900-1945

2
Between World Wars

• Many historians have described the period between
  the two World Wars as a traumatic coming of
  age.
• In a post-Industrial Revolution era, America had
  moved from an agrarian nation to an urban nation.
• The lives of these Americans were radically
  different from those of their parents.

3
Modernism

• Embraced nontraditional syntax and forms.
• Challenged tradition
• Writers wanted to move beyond Realism to
  introduce such concepts as disjointed timelines.
• An overarching theme of Modernism was
  emancipation

4
Roots of Modernism

• Influenced by Walt Whitmans free verse
• Prose poetry of British writer Oscar Wilde
• British writer Robert Brownings subversion of
  the poetic self
• Emily Dickinsons compression
• English Symbolist writers, especially Arthur
  Symons

5
Modernist Writers

• Ernest Hemingway, F. Scott Fitzgerald, William
  Faulkner, John Steinbeck, Gertrude Stein, T. S.
  Eliot, E. E. Cummings, Robert Frost
• Harlem Renaissance writers such as Langston
  Hughes, Zora Neale Hurston, James Weldon Johnson,
  Countee Cullen, Jean Toomer, Richard Wright

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Imagism

• School of Imagism Poetry Ezra Pound, H.D. Hilda
  Doolittle, Amy Lowell, William Carlos Williams
• Direct treatment of the thing.
• To use absolutely no word that does not
  contribute to the presentation.
• As regarding rhythm to compose in sequence of
  the musical phrase, not in sequence of the
  metronome.

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Charateristics

• Open form
• Juxtaposition EXthe placing of two objects
  near each other in order to draw forth a
  comparison

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Characteristics contd

• Free verse
• Discontinuous narrativea narrative style in
  which the narrative moves back and forth through
  time.
• Intertextuality texts, books, characters from
  one author are related to each other across
  multiple plot lines.
• EX anagram (satin to stain), allusion,
  adaptation, translation, parody, imitation, and
  other kinds of transformation
• Classical allusions
• Borrowing from cultures and other languages

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Discontinuous Narrative

• Faulkners The Sound and the Fury or As I Lay
  Dying

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Themes

• Breakdown of social norms and cultural sureties
• Alienation of the individual
• Valorization (heroic transformation) of the
  despairing individual in the force of an
  unmanageable future
• Product of the metropolis, of cities and
  urbanscapes

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Social Norms/Cultural Sureties

• Women were given the right to vote in 1920.
• Hemlines raised Margaret Sanger introduces the
  idea of birth control.
• Karl Marxs ideas flourish the Bolshevik
  Revolution overthrows Russias czarist government
  and establishes the Soviet Union.
• Writers begin to explore these new ideas.

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Theme of Alienation

• Sense of alienation in literature
• The character belongs to a lost generation
  (Gertrude Stein)
• The character suffers from a dissociation of
  sensibilityseparation of thought from feeling
  (T. S. Eliot)
• The character has a Dream deferred (Langston
  Hughes).

13
Valorization of the Individual

• Characters are heroic in the face of a future
  they cant control.
• Demonstrates the uncertainty felt by individuals
  living in this era.
• Examples include Jay Gatsby in The Great Gatsby,
  Lt. Henry in A Farewell to Arms

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Urbanscapes

• Life in the city differs from life on the farm
  writers began to explore city life.
• Conflicts begin to center on society.